BRONWYN STEELE TALKS LUNCH MONEY

by Kyle Minor

 

Dear Kyle Minor,

Maybe after fifteen years it won’t mean so much to you, but to me it means everything to write and say that I did not leave school three weeks before graduation because I was pregnant, and I did not leave because I stood on Principal Ratliff’s desk and renounced Christ, and I did not leave because of cocaine, Mary Jane, crank, crack, speed, or heroin.

Should I say it? Is it not sexy? Principal Ratliff said if my father didn’t pay my tuition by noon tomorrow there’d be no school tomorrow. Not for me.

Did you know where I was junior year? What did they say? I know they were always saying. (Pregnant again, right?) Here is the truth: I was in a van in California, with my mother and my father, parked in vineyards, one of us sitting watch every night just in case somebody came and we had to book it for Nevada.

Here is a confession: I stole your lunch money almost every morning while you thought you were tutoring me in math.

Here is what I remember: Nine Zulu Queens Ruled China. (Naturals, Integers, Rationals, Reals, Complex, right?)

Also:

 

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Did you know I was good at math? Did you know I kept a debt ledger? Did you know I was reading Julian Barbour? Did you know that quantum equations of the universe take their true form when expressed in the timeless configuration spacerealm containing every possible “now” or momentary configuration of the universe, which Barbour calls platonia?

Did you know Barbour is bullshit? By God if I could tap the timeless configuration spacerealm containing every now, I’d slide my newly sexy thirty-threeish body beside the you you were on the brown cafeteria stool some morning in 1994, and tutor you in math and more.

Enclosed please find seventy-six dollars.

 

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